Football, I’ve long maintained, is a package sport: to enjoy it you have to tolerate everything that comes with it—the constant advertising, corruption, hooliganism, tribalism, racism, offensively inane punditry. As a child I enjoyed football largely, I suspect, because I was not particularly aware of these things. It was only as I got older, when my knowledge of the game developed beyond what was happening on the pitch, that I began to lose interest in following it.

I finally stopped completely in the mid ‘00s. By then, the players, who for decades had resembled Bullseye contestants and traffic wardens, were beginning to look like low-rent nightclub owners—the kind who supplement their income by peddling crushed up Trebor mints disguised as cocaine. Some of these players were obviously gifted, but more often than not their talents were eclipsed by their irrepressible egos. They were the product of a new era of football that ushered in an accepted admiration for passionless individualism, whereby talented players didn’t particular care how well their teams performed, so long as they themselves increased their transfer value.

Football in the early ‘00s became exclusively a business; even the fans began to talk about it as though it was some sort of stock exchange. Supporting a big team seemed, to my mind, increasingly pointless—a bit like supporting Coca-Cola or DFS. But perhaps I was being unfair. I began following football again a couple of years ago and, much to my surprise, I have quite enjoyed it, in spite of all its unappealing associations I mentioned above. The standard of play is incredibly good nowadays—probably better in fact than it’s ever been. Yet nowadays, whenever I watch a big game, something about it still leaves me cold.

I can’t quite put my finger on why this is, but after watching some of the official FIFA World Cup films, I do have a clearer picture of what I used to love about football, and what I loved about the World Cup in particular. The films, which FIFA have produced after every World Cup since 1954, recap the highlights of each tournament: not only the moments made by the winners, but also those made by the countries that defied expectation. They capture the excitement of each Wold Cup, not to mention the fashions, which are invariably suspect—wet perms, ludicrous facial hair, kits that look as if they’ve been designed by an artist who works exclusively in highlighter pen. You could put one of these films on at random and immediately know which World Cup you’re watching. And even if you were unsure, the style of play would probably enlighten you.

Nowadays players look confident with the ball at their feet. They don’t look like malnourished tradesmen who have ended up on the pitch because an administration error, like many players in the World Cup films. Even in the 1980s, the age of Maradona, most players seem surprisingly awkward on the pitch. And yet I wouldn’t describe them as less skilful or talented than today’s players—just less slick, less polished, in many ways more interesting.

It’s worth noting, too, that until quite recently some countries were qualifying for the World Cup with teams consisting almost entirely of amateur players. In fact two of the most enduring Word Cup stories, to my mind, are those of New Zealand and Cameroon in the 1982 World Cup. These sides, both formed of mostly amateur players, had never played in the tournament, but breezed through their qualifying matches with impressive skill and determination. They fared less well in the actual tournament. New Zealand lost all their games and Cameroon were simply unfortunate: they played well in the group stages, holding Peru, Poland and Italy to draws, but failed to advance to the next round owing to goal difference—a cruel fate for a team that played showed so much potential.

For me one of the best parts of the World Cup is watching less established teams try their luck. I remember the thrilling opening of the game of the 2002 World Cup, when Senegal beat the then world champions France 1-0. I was beginning to lose interest in football at the time, but this helped rekindle some of my passion for it. Such moments are the reason I got into football in the first place. I was never impressed by the hysterical tribalism that excites so many. I’ve only ever cared about surprises: small teams beating big teams, unique and skilful players with inimitable talents.

When I was growing up I viewed the World Cup as showcase of international football. Now football fans are used to seeing players from all over the world playing every week in the Premier League, but in the ‘90s it was truly incredible for a British fan to watch Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos, whose agile and skilful style of play was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I found it equally thrilling to watch Higuita, the scorpion-kicking goalkeeper, and other players whose antics tickled the border between dazzling and batshit insane. As ridiculous as some of them were, they gave the game personality, a sense of fun.

I’m probably not qualified to comment on players today, and that’s largely because I struggle to tell them apart: not only did half the players at Russia ‘18 play like one another, but most had that peculiar mushroom cloud haircut that less than a decade ago was worn only by men who had been banned multiple times from Tiger Tiger. It must be this decade’s answer to the wet perm mullet, or vokuhila—i.e. inexplicably popular.

Suspect fashion aside, I enjoyed Russia ‘18, and I can see why so many actual football fans were quick to hail it as such a great tournament. There were exciting matches, fantastic goals and unexpected results—in other words, everything anybody could want from the World Cup.

Nevertheless, after it was over, I was left with the feeling that I’ll probably never enjoy the World Cup as much as I did when I was younger. Partly, I feel, this is because the game has changed, but I understand now that I, too, have changed. I’m too cynical and irritated by the negative elements surrounding the game to enjoy truly what’s happening on the pitch. And though, whenever I watch football, I do quickly become invested in the outcome of the game, I rarely feel invested to a strong emotional degree. I like football purely in a casual sense. I like watching talented players, but for me the part of the game that most fans enjoy—the gamble of emotions when you’re desperately praying for your team to win—is absent, and probably always will be.

That is fine by me. I can still enjoy new matches. I can reminisce and watch the FIFA World Cup films. And if I want to I can forget about football altogether—which, as a former die hard fan, I can tell you is a blessing.

]]>http://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/28/on-not-following-football/feed/0Extreme Patriotism in the Age of the Brexit Tea Caddyhttp://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/index.php/2017/05/11/extreme-patriotism/
http://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/index.php/2017/05/11/extreme-patriotism/#respondThu, 11 May 2017 14:25:16 +0000http://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/?p=4455

Unbridled patriotism has seized hold of the British people. With Nigel Farage, Captain Britain himself, cheering from the sidelines Britannia has cast off the shackles of EU bureaucracy and is presently awaiting a bounty of vast riches. Political correctness and health and safety, the true agents of evil, will bother us no more; in Brexit Britain everybody (provided they are alabaster white and hysterically anti-EU) is free. We are a nation once again, and our government, filled as it is with authoritarians, liars and disingenuous psychopaths, are on hand, we must assume, to put our interests firmly at the centre of their agenda. The old way of life has ceased to be. We are now living in the age of the Brexit Tea Caddy, a bewildering time in which blind and inextinguishable patriotism is the national currency.

Let me explain for those who have not yet had the privilege of discovering it for themselves exactly what the Brexit Tea Caddy is: in brief, it is a patriotic memento celebrating Britain’s historic decision to leave the EU, which is emblazoned with the sort of WWII-themed propaganda that, for reasons unknown to me, sometimes appears on biscuit tins. Lovingly produced by The Daily Express for its readership of outrage hobbyists, it is an item that somehow manages to encapsulate everything I find objectionable about Middle England, and is indicative of the sort of bile-spitting reactionary who claims to love Britain yet actually knows next to nothing about it.

The caddy features on its box the words “LIVE – BREATHE – DRINK” (the official motto of Brexit Britain) and a signpost on which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland have been superimposed. The average Daily Express reader, I’m sure, would not think twice about this, but for the sake of accuracy we should be clear: Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom and it certainly is not part of Great Britain. The Daily Express, which has often expressed a venomous anti-Irish sentiment, would do well to leave the Irish people out of its campaign venerating British arrogance. But perhaps the paper and its readership genuinely are that ignorant of British history. Chest-thumping patriots generally are.

It would be wrong for me to suggest that such people are not patriots of course. A patriot, by definition, is somebody who vigorously supports his country; he doesn’t necessarily have to know anything about it. On the other hand, can it really be said that the readership and indeed writers of The Daily Express truly support their country? Or do they simply support its current government, its monarchy and its former empire, which exploited and oppressed people both abroad and here in Britain for the benefit of a privileged few?

To my mind, their affection for Britain seems horribly insincere, not to mention rather creepy. Yet their form of patriotism, though not popular, is certainly ubiquitous in England, and the hysterical, jingoistic nature of it is one of the reasons so many on the Left feel unease about expressing affection for their country and its traditions: why, after all, would anybody wish to be associated with patriotism when its most fervent proponents seem to care only for the Queen, jam and imperialism?

Rather than allowing such people to have a monopoly on patriotism, we should be striving to make loving your country a sentiment with which all British people associate in a positive way; a sentiment free of political and racial affiliation and, most importantly, the conviction that we as a nation are inherently superior to our foreign neighbours. I am sure this suggestion would anger the average Daily Express reader, who would no doubt dismiss it as dangerously egalitarian and me as some wishy-washy, politically correct pinko. But they should know that they have had a far more detrimental effect on the way that the British people view their country than anybody like me ever could; for rather than celebrating, say, Britain’s contributions to science and literature, they choose to extol symbols of stereotypical Britishness—some of which are not actually British at all (tea), and a great many others are products of high society and the monarchy.

For the majority of British people, whose ancestors were more likely farm labourers and factory workers than nobility, this sycophantic notion of patriotism must seem hugely uninspiring. Yet it is happily accepted by the British media establishment, who spoon feed it to us whenever a sporting event or royal ceremony takes place.

I am happy to admit that I am not overtly patriotic. Not since I was a child have I cheered on England in an international sporting event. Nor am I roused by God Save the Queen, with its bizarre lyrics and dreary, soporific melody, or by the sight of a Union flag dangling from the window of a block of flats. Yet I do have affection for Britain: for its little towns and great cities, for its literature and its old pubs, and for its moors and meadows. I like how Britain’s various regions have their own firmly established heritages and dialects and how, in spite of this, the British people also share a single identifiable character. Some might say this character is marked by diffidence, stoicism, politeness and a desire to withhold one’s emotions, and to a certain extent they are right. But there is also another element to it that is much trickier to pin down. For me this is exemplified by items you might find in the homes of Working Class grandparents: horse brass medallions, a yellowed net curtain, a wall of commemorative dinner plates, discoloured holiday postcards and ornamental bellows beside a gas fire. But this, I appreciate, may not resonate with all British people as strongly and as warmly as it does with me.

Patriotism is a sentiment that manifests differently in everybody who feels it, and I think it’s fair to say that patriotism of the British people is, on the whole, not vocal or even conscious. The vast majority of us, including those prone to bigotry, do not regularly partake in the waving of flags or the singing of ‘Rule Britannia!’; and such public displays of showing off are not at all typical of the national character. We may take pride in our heritage and achievements, but we do so discreetly for the most part; only insufferable loudmouths, diehard traditionalists and the editors of our national press feel the need to overemphasize our importance and greatness. The rest of us take a more realistic view of Britain and particularly of our leaders—because it is one thing to support your country and quite another to support your government without question.

This is an important distinction to make. Michael Caine, for example, is a professed patriot, and yet for many years he reconciled loving his country with his living hundreds of miles away from it as a tax exile. I can only imagine the extensive mental gymnastics that Caine performed in order to justify to himself this seemingly unpatriotic act. To his mind, perhaps, he believed he was merely exercising his displeasure at the Labour government’s high tax rate for the rich; that deep down he still loved the country that made him, but felt no obligation to contribute financially to its future and by extension the future of his compatriots.

If Caine wishes to identify as a patriot, then he is entitled to do so. There is no single authority on the laws of loving your country, and though Caine may well be a hypocrite, nobody surely can doubt his sincerity. In many ways he is exactly the sort of person you might expect to own a Brexit Tea Caddy. He rhapsodizes about being British whenever the opportunity arises, though the object of his affection for Britain is evidently not the British people, but a set of misguided beliefs rooted in his yearning for a bygone era. Coincidentally, his recent comments on his staunch support for Brexit reveal that, like many self-proclaimed patriots, he is also bereft of self-awareness. “I voted for Brexit,” he told Sky News, that last bastion of impartiality and understatement. “What it is with me, I’d rather be a poor master than a rich servant.”

This is incredibly rich coming from a man who has been a world-famous millionaire for the past fifty years. But it is typical, alas, of the attitudes of hard line patriots. For them, Britain is the freedom-loving nation whose only sin in our otherwise flawless history was our joining of the EU. We are not, in their eyes, historically the oppressors of foreign nations, but the country that fought Nazism and won. So deep and boundless is their delusion that some genuinely believe that we have been oppressed; that in spite of our generous benevolence the rest of Europe has been incredible unfair on us. But we are not an oppressed nation, and any suggestion that we are is disrespectful to the many nations that suffered at the hands of the British Empire.

Any possibility of redefining British patriotism for present times seems unlikely at this stage. Those with fetishes for militarism and the monarchy, who feel emboldened by the Brexit result, and sense that now is Britain’s opportunity to reclaim its standing as a world power, have made patriotism a deeply unpalatable sentiment with which many people don’t wish to associate. Under their influence it is little more than an innate feeling of superiority; it is the belief that Britishness belongs only to Middle Englanders, who dream endlessly of jolly vicars riding bicycles, cucumber sandwiches on the village green and other symbols of provincial innocence.

For me such things only serve to highlight the narrowness of their world view. I have never belonged to the Britain of which they speak and neither did my ancestors—labourers, factory workers, coal miners, dockers. Nor, I don’t think, do many people in Britain for that matter. Yet as long as the Brexit Tea drinking crowd are about patriotism will always be a sentiment held by people whose views are like the contents of a chauvinist Victorian morale tale. I don’t think this is likely to change any time soon—not at any rate in the current political environment. So I hope, genuinely, that they enjoy their Brexit Tea. They’re welcome to it.

Older generations have always bemoaned the life choices of their children. But few have exercised quite such passionate disdain for young people as the so-called Baby Boomers.

In the decades following WWII, older generations resented young people for their social mobility, the likes of which they were never fortunate enough to experience themselves. But the young people of today, the group the media are eager to call “Millennials”, have fewer opportunities than their parents had at their age, not to mention considerably lower wages. Most will never own a property in their lifetime. Nor will they be able to retire in their early 60s and spend their final years travelling the world in luxury. They will not in forty years time be the subject of films in quite the same way the Baby Boomers are now: for them there will be no voyages of wishful fulfilment and self-discovery, no The Best Exotic MarigoldHotel. Their films will instead be distinctly apocalyptic, depicting the realities of growing old in a world in which health care is a privilege rather than a right; a world forged by a generation that died long ago, but whose grip can still be firmly felt.

As you’ve likely already discerned from the bitterness I’ve just expressed, I am a Millennial, and I happen to possess several of the characteristics typically associated with this much-loathed group: these, I’m told, include a propensity for socially liberal politics, adeptness at computers, a distrust of religion and little desire to have children or to marry. Like many Millennials, I went to university and in the years following the Great Recession experienced unemployment followed by a period of stagnancy. I haven’t on the other hand lived with my parents since I was a teenager, which is apparently a trend among Millennials, or had to depend on them for financial support. Nor do feel particularly like a Millennial—that is to say, I don’t feel as if I share a stronger bond with people my own age than those who are older.

Nevertheless, when confronted with the usual criticisms of my generation, I feel obliged to offer a few words of defence. It is my view that, as generations go, Millennials are largely innocuous. They exercise minimal political influence over the way that the world is run, and despite being the most educated generation in history are confined to jobs well below their skill base. Some say this is because they’re feckless and afraid of hard work, which historically of course is the same argument that the powerful and affluent have used to bolster prejudices against burdensome groups. It’s also not true, since Millennials on the whole work more hours than their parents did at their age, and for considerably less money.

I can see why some would find this difficult to believe. The media depicts the Millennial as somebody who has little interest in anything beyond their smartphone; an insufferable whinger, who listens to abrasive music, is bereft of manners and who refuses to grow up; a “snowflake”, to use a term coined by the far-right, who, as you may know, are renowned for their ability to accept criticism. This in my experience is a view that some are only too happy to accept. And having worked in customer service (one of the few areas in which Millennials excel), I have heard it expressed many times, particularly by Baby Boomers who are generally eager to add for my benefit that, though I’m a Millennial, I’m not quite as bad as the rest. I appreciate their making this distinction, but by doing so they reveal the hollowness of their prejudice: they can agree that there are exceptions to their belief, but not to the extent where they feel it’s necessary to re-evaluate it at all.

Some might argue that the human brain is prone to generalisation—and I think there’s some truth to this. I made a generalisation in my opening statement by suggesting that Baby Boomers hate young people, ignoring that there are obviously plenty of Baby Boomers who do not. Yet I don’t believe it’s a generalisation to suggest that there are a fair few Baby Boomers out there who harbour contempt for Millennials. This is not to suggest that the opposite is not true also; simply that it’s important to acknowledge the distinction between the reasons for each other’s rancour.

As to Millennials, the reasons are, I think, easy enough to understand. The future inheritors of the world, they are largely dissatisfied with current events, and are unable to identify with the politics of the older generations. They are apprehensive about the future and believe that the older generations, particularly the Baby Boomers, the most politically dominant group in our society, care only for themselves. The Baby Boomers on the other hand see things differently: to their minds, it is the Millennials who care only for themselves, since the average Millennial wasn’t raised with the same upstanding moral and social values that they were, and so are, in their opinion, avaricious, rude and feckless. Millennials also have little affection for the 1950s and 60s, and for a great number of Baby Boomers this is akin to blasphemy. After all the period represents much of what they tend to support: less immigration, less health and safety, Britain out of the European Union, a thriving industrial sector.

No doubt there will come a day when Millennials look back on the 1990s in a similar way, blind to the problems that blighted that time. I don’t by any means want to suggest that Millennials are all extraordinarily gifted and blameless. Nor do I want to suggest that all Baby Boomers are contemptuous, closed-minded and irrationally piqued by the very existence of young people. In truth, Millennials are probably quite a boring generation whose accomplishments are as yet minimal. But they are also on the whole not especially obnoxious or deserving of scorn: statistics, for instance, show that they’re more concerned about social inequality than older generations, and, despite being the poorest generation in decades, they are peculiarly optimistic.

I don’t know why this is. Our future is not yet in our own hands, but those of the older generations who have already secured for themselves relative comfort and affluence. Either by design or by accident, they have created a system by which Millennials will have to depend on inheriting their parents’ wealth, while those without rich parents, the vast majority of Millennials, will not be able retire or own a home or do much at all.

Sad as this is, we should perhaps not despair too readily. In years to come, long after the Baby Boomers have passed, and we Millennials are old, poor and inflicted with illnesses not covered by our health insurance, we can take solace in the thought that we no longer have to endure an endless slew of films celebrating the glorious legacy of the Baby Boomers, that most exceptional of generations.

]]>http://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/index.php/2017/04/20/my-generation/feed/0The Dawn of Hatehttp://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/index.php/2016/11/09/the-dawn-of-hate/
http://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/index.php/2016/11/09/the-dawn-of-hate/#respondWed, 09 Nov 2016 11:03:49 +0000http://nosoapradiopolka.co.uk/?p=4365It’s 9th November 2016 and Donald Trump, a man synonymous with multiple bankruptcies, unapologetic bigotry, extreme physical and moral repulsiveness and a staunch belief in his own brilliance has just won the 2016 presidential election.

His inability to express himself in concise, articulate sentences led many observers during the course of his campaign of hate to dismiss Trump as a laughable buffoon, whose popularity was confined to a staunch gaggle of xenophobes, gun nuts and idiots. But I never once questioned his electability. Having sampled first-hand the nationalistic hysteria surrounding Brexit, which to my mind has become, for many voters, less of a campaign against EU bureaucracy, and more a demonstration of determined British arrogance, I knew that the political climate was changing in quite a radical way. In Britain and America people have, ostensibly, been seduced by the notion that unscrupulous opportunists, notably Trump and Nigel Farage, are concerned with the plights of working people; that despite their disdain for worker’s rights, free health care and trade unions they somehow value working people and aim to bring about positive change.

I fear that the real agents of despondency and frustration will be ignored and perhaps even elevated under Trump’s leadership, and I suspect the same will happen here in what the newspapers are already calling post-Brexit Britain. On the whole, I am hesitant to blame voters for Trump’s uprising; to do so, ignores that there have been other factors at play here. Yet, at the same time, those who have supported Trump have clearly demonstrated that they either agree with him or are able to overlook his lies, his “grab her by the pussy” comment and his disdain for the people he regards, quite bizarrely, as enemies—immigrants, refugees, all other nations (aside from Russia, maybe?), ethnic minorities, women, etc.

Whether Trump’s ramblings were in fact promises or just words to appease his outraged supporters remains to be seen, of course. Either way, we can be sure that Trump’s election win, and the whole Brexit ordeal, will usher in a sort of nonconformist conservatism: the bogus belief that egalitarianism has gone too far, and that somehow, by looking to the past, we can create a better future, though for whom exactly?

Nostalgia is a powerful tool. It suggests that the past is rosier than the present even when the opposite it is true. When Trump says, “Make America Great Again”, he never gives an example of when America was great, because to do so would highlight the absurdity of his mantra. You could pick any decade or period in American history and claim that things were better then, but the reality is the American people have more job security, are better paid and have wider access to health care than ever before. Why, I wonder, would anybody wish to return to, say, the 1950s, a time of backstreet abortions, discrimination, underemployment, destitution and poverty?

One explanation for Trump’s popularity that I’ve heard a few times already is that liberals, and specifically politically correct liberals, are to blame for his popularity; that by calling people racist or misogynistic or bigoted has brought about a movement that feels shackled by political correctness. Personally, I’m skeptical of such an argument, since I think it’s important not to appease people with hateful views, or to allow such views to become the status quo, which will happen if we don’t challenge bigotry head on. However, I can certainly see how far-left social activism, particularly a culture of dismissing rather than challenging people on their untenable views, might have contributed to a feeling of helplessness among some on the right.

It is true, moreover, that Hillary Clinton was not a strong candidate by any means. For many people she represented an stagnant and corrupt branch of politics, a form of passive neoliberalism influenced by the political trends of the last thirty years. Her plan for America did not include radical change, and that it seems to me is want Americans want desperately. Trump knew this, and he promised change (some would say regressive change) by the barrel load, never once concerning himself with the effects that such change would bring about. In fact, his desire to change American politics was just about the only consistent thing about his message, even if the message itself lacked substance and consistence.

The internet, too, has played an enormous factor in all this. Its distorting effects have, in my view, given a voice to particularly extreme individuals on both sides of the political spectrum. As a result many people have come to see those with different political views to themselves as outrageous caricatures, and many politicians have sought to gain popularity by widening these divisions even further. Trump and Farage in particular have built political careers on exploiting a divided public. Their tactics wouldn’t have been effective before 2008, but economic under performance and a fear of immigration have caused many otherwise rational human beings to become embittered. Their political agenda has become entirely concerned with detesting and shaming “the other side”, rather than finding a viable solution to these problems. Politics has, in effect, become a sort of low budget pantomime in which little matters besides bitter disputes and poorly executed hatchet jobs.

I’m now eager to know what will happen next. If, as I suspect, he’s as predictable as he is unscrupulous, then Trump will no doubt increase the rich/poor divide, create unprecedented racial tension and likely start some unnecessary trade war with all of the nations he holds in such low regard. I also, if I’m honest, foresee him pulling a Gadaffi, or a Samuel Doe, and living in a hole somewhere in, say, South America, having alienated his last few remaining allies and supporters. Maintaining social and political stability is, I imagine, not on his agenda, and it seems unlikely that such an narcissistic flip-flopper, whose opinions appear to change depending on what he’s had for breakfast that morning, can maintain any sort of order, however many aides are on hand to reign him in.

The word Charterhouse, meaning a Carthusian monastery, is derived from La Grande Chartreuse, the first hermitage of the Carthusian Order founded by Saint Bruno. There were ten Charterhouses in the Britain before the Reformation. The pious monks who lived in them worked, meditated and said daily offices in the solitude of their cells, encountering each other in church only for daily Matins and Vespers, and less often at the convent mass.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries brought an end to the Carthusian Order in Britain. Between 1536 and 1541, Henry VIII disbanded Catholic monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and reassigned or dismissed their former members and functions. Carthusians at the London Charterhouse who resisted the Dissolution were treated severely: the Prior, John Houghton, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, and of the ten monks that were arrested and taken to Newgate Prison, nine died of starvation.

In the centuries that followed, several Charterhouses were heavily adapted and used for a variety of purposes. The London Charterhouse, for instance, was purchased in 1545 by Sir Edward North and transformed into a luxurious mansion house. This was later acquired by a wealthy civil servant and businessman named Thomas Sutton, who bequeathed a large portion of his fortune to establishing on the site a hospital for 80 impoverished gentlemen and a school for 40 boys.

Each Charterhouse has its own unique history. I recently visited the one in Kingston Upon Hull, where I was treated to a fascinating tour of the buildings and grounds by Master Stephen Deas. He showed me, among other things, a plaque commemorating the two London Carthusians, Walworth and Rochester, whom Henry VIII caused to be lodged in the Hull Charterhouse on their way to execution at York; and the mulberry tree under which Andrew Marvell, the famous poet and MP, is said to have played when his father was the Master of the House.

From its foundation, the Hull Charterhouse enjoyed a separate endowment that enabled it to survive the Dissolution. Nevertheless, the structure of the hospital was significantly destroyed in the first siege of Hull during the English Civil War, when the Master and almspeople had to abandon the buildings and seek refuge in a tenement in Silver Street, on land that the Charterhouse has owned since the fifteenth century, and still owns to this day.

Master John Shawe began rebuilding the war-damaged buildings in the early 1650s. The chapel was rebuilt some twenty years later, and served the house for over a century when, in 1777, it was demolished by Master Bourne, along with the greater part of the seventeenth-century buildings.

Master Bourne enlarged the Master’s House, and rebuilt the rest of the House in the handsome classical style that you can see today.

Inside the chapel. Note the earl’s coronet hanging from the foot of the chandelier.

Johnson removed certain incongruous fittings and replaced the lights he found hanging from eight points in the ceiling with three wooden chandeliers carved by Dick Reed of York. Each is embellished with an earl’s coronet to indicate the Founder’s rank in the peerage and from the foot of each hangs a small roundel containing a set of initials: HMD for Hugh Middlecott Davies, then Master; VM for Violet Mitchell, then lord Mayor of Kingston upon Hull and Admiral of the Humber; and RAS for Rupert Alec-Smith.

The chapel is at the hub and still centre of the Hull Charterhouse. Every Sunday the whole House gathers in it at ten in the morning for a celebration of Holy Communion, and there is also a celebration of the Holy Communion on Wednesdays at ten for those who wish to attend.

The Hull Charterhouse, like the London Charterhouse, is a flourishing institution that has adapted well to the modern world. There are now over 30 residents, both male and female (some are couples), all of whom are over the age of 60 and have a long relationship with the city of Hull. Unlike the Brothers of the London Charterhouse, they do not eat together for every meal; they live independently but have the support of a community as they desire, always keeping one foot in the Charterhouse and the other outside.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, and learnt a great deal about the community that live there, and about the city of Hull as a whole. I’m extremely grateful to Stephen Deas, the Master, for showing me about the place, and to Ann Godden, a resident, who chatted to me at length about the history of the Hull Charterhouse and her experiences in the area.

The two Charterhouses, London and Hull, are different in many respects, but at their core they share many things in common, including a strong sense of community.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Hull Charterhouse, you can like their Facebook group, which Ann Godden regularly updates with artefacts and articles from their prodigious history.